Winners of the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards, part 1

Winners of 2014 Sony World Photography Awards

Sony World Photography Awards has announced the winners in their Open, Youth and National categories. The winning photos were selected from more than 70,000 images submitted by enthusiasts all over world.

Prizes range from the latest Sony cameras to trips to London to attend the Sony World Photography Awards gala. An overall winner with a $5,000 (~£3,024) cash prize and judging of the remaining categories will be announced on April 30.

To those who decry the use of Photoshop (or other editing tools), just accept that no photo EVER has been a true representation of the real world.

The day we have a camera that can do that, is the day DPReview gives their 101% - Extra Shiny Platinum Award at the end of that camera review ;-)

Every film, camera sensor and associated technology alters the image. Photoshop alters the image. We all produce images that are altered from the scene we captured, whether we like it or not. Indeed, many Photoshopped images are closer to the real scene than what the camera produced prior to editing.

Let's get over ourselves and make the most of hardware and software technology to produce images that we are personally proud of. If others like them, great! :-)

I completely agree. This religious attitude to post processing is inexplicable. Film is hardly realistic, especially black and white film.

A digital file is just a set of RGB values adjusted by the camera (or Photoshop) to produce a contrast response that is a good default for a flat image. Most images are not flat, so you need to make further adjustments in post to even approximate the adjustments the brain makes when it sees the same scene.

None of which can make up for poor composition, focus or choice of aperture etc.

Totally agree Dave, anyone who has spent time developing film and with an enlarger making prints quickly understands that getting the image on the media, be it an electronic sensor or silver film, knows that it is just 50% of the total process. Photoshop or Lightroom is your darkroom.

I looked at the pictures and groaned: mostly a set of competently framed and exposed, often over-processed visual clichés. It is gratifying to note that others here, too, recognized this.

The message seems to be that if you use Sony, then you can take pretty pictures like this, too. And the Chinese professional model is, for me, the kicker! Good for him that he's found a way to enter Moss's profession, though likely at a more modest level of remuneration!

No. 5 is just a typical set up scene in certain part of China that anyone can take one like this if you pay 2 dollars. The man is there every day for you guys to take pics of him like this one. The old man is not a fisherman (maybe he used to be), his job is posing for tourists.

Agree, most are just Photoshop awards. It's so sad the direction of photography these days. People cant take a good photo so they Photoshop it or Lightroom it to death until it looks more than it is. What a joke Sony.

It helps to remember that helmet shields curve far more left to right than they do top to bottom. So the fact that you can see one hand which is way to the side says little about the other which is ahead and below the shield, looking up. Indeed, looking at the right side and bottom of the shield you can make out a sliver of his arm. His hand would appear to be at the top edge & center of the helmets breathing port.

When people criticise absurdly over-photoshoped images, you can always be sure the "Ansel Adams did it too" comments will follow shortly.

As someone else mentioned, most photos are pretty flat and uninteresting without a little "help", but personally when a photo starts to look cartoon-ish and unreal, that's where i draw the line. I think there should be some rules in these contests: for example, global processing of the sort Lightroom offers should be allowed, but no cutting of the image in separate areas for local tweaking, as that's a slippery slope that knows no end. JMHO.

This is too funny - the entry from Neville Jones, 1st Place, Australia National Award is a shot of the same guy taken from almost the exact same spot (near a small village near Yanshuo, China) as me just over a year ago! (check my galley)

@inasir1971 There is a world of difference between your shot and the winning image.

If anything, the comparison is an excellent case study of how two photos of the same subject can be so different in terms of aesthetics. Study the winning photo for clues as to what makes a photo magical versus what makes a photo look like a holiday snap.

There's nothing at all wrong with holiday snaps if they evoke great memories for the person who took them. But, unlike the winning image, many have limited appeal to others.

You're rightthey are good in the first place, the location, the exposure, focusing etc. But they are heavily edited to stand out, at least many of them and it's easily noticeable.

So I see many of them more as beautiful examples of image making than as photography. I'm not the only one, that is why maybe many choose 18 as a fav in relation to photography of this series. I like 13 also a lot.

Post processing or printing manipulations have always been a part of photography. And to some degree or another (in some instances very subtle, in other instances less so) photography is a visual abstraction, only referential of an objective reality. So I find it difficult to support terms like "real photography".

hate to tell you but everything is run through Photoshop and I grantee ya that pretty much every single one of these photos was shot in RAW. "Real photography"? Unless you are shooting a Polaroid, real photography in your eyes has never existed. Even during the age of film, Kodachrome & Velvia which saturated colors existed. Ansel himself edited his images extensively in the darkroom. The camera is incapable of capturing the dynamic range of what the human eye sees....editing your images is not only fundamental but required in the digital age if you don't want to have something that looks like it was taken at the family BBQ on a Sunday

I have no idea why everyone is so upset over post processing. Most photographers do it. Imagine if even the best film director's didn't edit their videos together, and had just the raw video's put back to back with each other. It wouldn't be very appealing. We like watching movies because they flow and were edited to flow and to be entertaining and give us something to look at. Same with post processing. If you don't post process, cool, Good for you man. But don't start slamming us photographers who post process. We take the best shots we can in the field, and then edit it so that a demographic can look at our photo's and be entertained, inspired, or captured emotionally.All within reason of course, if the photo you originally taken can't be seen at all anymore in your final product, you've gone too far.

EJPB, very well articulated and I largely agree with your points. I also have no problem with post processing as such. What I do think, however, is that in time much imagery produced currently will be viewed as a particular form of visual mannerism - in other words, images seemingly defaulting to techniques to render punch spatially. And the visual byproduct of this can be imagery with a slightly un-nuanced sense of contrast and saccharine-leaning color; this risks overwhelming concepts or what might have other layers of content.

In no way to disregard your preference, I find that image one of the most compelling images featured. Such competitions many times produce imagery that, though often unique in content, become very predictable in formal approach(es). The cowboys image, to my eye, presents something a bit different. The darker exposure creates a deep nuanced richness to the earthen tones and textures. And, yet it doesn't seem brooding in the darker tonality and lower contrast. The depth and organization within the frame are quite elegant. Overall, the command of formal elements creates something that promotes prolonged investigation, and I find myself enjoying an ambivalence between viewing the scene in a documentary sense and viewing it as a construction of idyll.

2. When one follows the link to "Sony World Photography Awards", the first link on the page is "2014 Exhibition Tickets". Yeah, tickets are cheap (£7.50) but no, I'm not going to "Somerset House, London, UK" just to visit a sponsored photo exhibit.

Yes, I wanted to see great photographs. But no, not at this puny resolution and/or few continents away.

These are amazing pics. To all the notorious naysayers in this comnent section: please be specific and tell EXACTELY which photos have allegedly been photoshopped or HDR-ed or whatever. Please be specific, when giving negative comments, otbetwise your critique is going to come across as hating rather than being helpful.Thanks!

Jjejeje people compelían about everything, to much photoshop, not real, HDR,... But they don't seem to do any better. No galleries, no link to website, no link to there work. Is so easy to complain when you are shooting cats and flowers around the house.

Some of these pictures might no be what I call award winning, but they are indeed nice, some are excellent.

Number 14 is a Photoshop fail! How can water just bend like that when coming out of the bucket? Another example of the how the judges have no idea what they are doing. Oh, that's right, this is Sony, I should have known. The death of true photography continues.

The water isn't bending (water doesn't "bend"). There is nothing unusual about that picture other than its comic value. Water is composed of water molecules, and in liquid form each molecule acts independently with some interaction due to surface tension, etc. Each undergoes accelerations and has its own trajectory. I have seen much more odd looking plumes than that (I'm an ocean engineer and see weird stuff all the time related to water).

Some are ok but the ones that are HDR or heavily post processed are jokes. Gone are the days when a photo has to stand on it's own. Now when a loser take a crappy photo, they just HDR it or apply filter and now the amateur judges say "Cool filter" and bam, they have a winner. It's so sad what is happening with photos these days. The death of photography is still going strong.

So what?? It's a valid tool. Part of the digital creative process.In 2014 cameras are still limited... Even the best of the best still doesn't have the dynamic range of the human eye. Cameras see one light. Dark or light. One exposure and one aperture and a flat 2-dimensional plane.For example, The human eye doesn't see in F2.8. Still, bokeh is considered cool. That is something unreal and artificial introduced by a lens, not what we really see.So photoshop is not so different after all. Besides who cares if people like processing or not. It's here to stay and whoever doesn't adopt it will be left behind.